#Mike Murdockalypse

[daresplaining]

Daredevil vol. 5 #612 by Charles Soule, Phil Noto, and Clayton Cowles

I just miss him, that's all.

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I'm not going to make Magical Twins my new icon image, I'm far too attached to good ol' singing Mike, but the temptation is there.

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Foggy: "I mean, I love [Matt] like a brother and it's like he's part of my family, but...but my family's pretty messed up!" Daredevil vol. 1 #354 by Karl Kesel, Cary Nord, Christie Scheele, Matt Ryan, Ul Higgins, and Jim Novak

Matt: "Foggy, I love you like a brother...but I'm starting to love you like my brother, the wild #$@%-up who ruins everything he touches!" Daredevil vol. 6 #24 by Chip Zdarsky, Mike Hawthorne, J.P. Mayer, Mattia Iacono, and Clayton Cowles

I'm obsessed with this parallel.

[daresplaining]

"You're crazy, all of you. I'm real, you hear me? As real as anyone." Daredevil vol. 5 #607 by Charles Soule, Phil Noto, and Clayton Cowles

"I don't even know how to say this...I'm not real." Devil's Reign #5 by Chip Zdarsky, Marco Checchetto,  Marcio Menyz, and Clayton Cowles

I touched on this topic in this post, but the thought has been gnawing on my brain since Devil's Reign #5 dropped (in March 2022? Mike has been dead for two years already?! God...) so I'm giving it its own post.

Modern Mike's existence is divided into two clearly delineated states of being: "fragment" (Reader's umbrella term for his creations) and "Real Boy" (Mike's term for himself from the 2020 Annual, though shout-out to the fans who had already been calling him that since 2018). It's a literal transformation, from one form of life to another, but it also spans Mike's character arc and psychological journey: from desperately declaring his realness in Daredevil volume 5 to begrudgingly accepting the nature of his existence at the end of his introductory arc, to taking action and making himself real in Daredevil volume 6. For me, the above scene from #607 was the gut-punch moment that first got me intensely intensely invested in modern Mike, when the depth of his fear and the horror of his situation became clear-- and the emotional resonance of that moment, for me, carried over into the bombshell scene in Devil's Reign #5 when he answered the questions that had been left dangling after he rewrote reality in the 2020 Annual: Did he still remember the previous version of the world? Did he remember what he had done to change it? Did he remember being a "fragment"?

His nervous declaration to Butch-- "I'm not real"-- hits like a truck not just because it is such a risky admission, but also because of how it contextualizes Mike's new reality and what his cosmic rewrite actually changed for him. Which, it would seem, was probably not enough.

Yes, after his trick with the Norn Stone, the gaps in his memories have been filled in. Yes, he now has a birth certificate and a social security number (presumably) and actual friends and family who share actual history with him, and I'm sure that's a tremendous relief. But how much of a solace can it really be, when he still knows that the only reason he has all of those things is because he forced the universe to give them to him? His twin might think they were born together now, but Mike still knows the truth about how he was created, and now he is the only person in the world who does. He has gone from having unique memories of a past that doesn't exist for anyone else to...having unique memories of a past that doesn't exist for anyone else.

Is this new reality that much better than the old one for Mike? If he still knows that he hasn't always been real, does he feel any less like a ghost?

It is very easy to find parallels between Mike being the only person who remembers his time as a "fragment" and Matt, following the Purple Children's mind wipe, being the only person who still knew that he was Daredevil. Matt was stuck with knowledge of a world that once was-- a world in which his identity was public-- and he couldn't handle the sudden total isolation of no one at all sharing his secret, and so decided to tell someone (but just one person; Foggy). Mike's situation was nearly the same. The fear and isolation and vulnerability he'd felt as a fragment was something he had literally bent the universe to escape, but he was still left haunted by the memory of it. We didn't get much of a sense of what was going on in Mike's head in his appearances following the Annual, but I can only imagine that, mixed in with everything else he was feeling in that scene in Devil's Reign #5, he felt some amount of relief sharing the weight of that secret with his best friend. I have to wonder if, had he lived long enough, he would have told anyone else.

[daresplaining]

All right! I've polled for this before, but now that I have the proper technology...

(Part 1 is here)

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All right! I've polled for this before, but now that I have the proper technology...

(Part 2 is here)

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my only """real""" complaint about daredevil black armor is that we had the perfect opportunity to have MORE MIKE AND IT WAS WASTED. the flashbacks should have included him.

YES! I was thinking about that too! (Probably not news, I'm always thinking about Mike.) It would have been really cool for Chichester to position the series as a retrospective within the new Mike continuity and include him. I'd give anything to see Chichester's take on our guy (he's one of my favorite DD writers and very good with character-building), and heck, even beyond just the baby Matt training flashbacks, I would love to know what Mike was up to in the 90s, following Matt's "death". He would've gotten a kick out of Jack Batlin.

I understand why they didn't go that route, though, or why it might not have even occurred to them. This series was very clearly set up as a chance for Chichester to finally return to his status quo-- the very specific Daredevil world and supporting cast he'd built in the 90s-- as if no time had passed and his run had not been messily cancelled. It's a continuation of a pre-existing thing, a comic meant to feel like it could have actually come out in 1994. Because of this, including something modern like Mike, regardless of his new always-been-real status, would have felt out-of-place.

That said...all other flashback series from 2020 forward should not be exempt. Put Mike in all of the things.

[daresplaining]

So since it's established that Matt is a terrible brother, and Reader did make a replica of someone before (albeit on purpose), I'd like to propose that Mike technically also has a sister and when he comes back he should hang out with her instead.

Hey, yeah, sounds good to me! At this point, I'd take Mike hanging out with anyone, at any time, for any reason, but fingers crossed that when he does finally kick his way out of that grave, he gets treated to some quality time with someone who isn't a jerk to him.

[daresplaining]

*Pokes at the dirt around Mike's grave* "Do something."

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Mike Murdock's Sunglasses: On Character Design and Autonomy

I've written a little in the past about character design in regards to the translation of zany alter ego 1960s Mike Murdock into slightly-more-grounded, at least 85% more real 21st century Mike Murdock. Specifically, I talked with artist Phil Noto about Mike's outfits in Daredevil #606-612, and analyzed the clothing choices made by the creative team in the 2020 Annual. However, one specific detail that I find interesting in Mike's transformation from Matt's hyperactive id to his own autonomous person that I haven't really written about yet is his sunglasses-- when he wears them, when he stops, and how this shift may or may not align with his journey.

Matt: "Let's see now-- I'll just muss up the mop, to give myself that carefree tousled look! A fella like Mike wouldn't be caught dead with a simple Ivy-League hair comb! And, I'll have to give my specs a coffee break for a while, as I cover my sightless eyes in a more colorful way-- If the attorney-at-law business ever gets slow, I might just decide to open a school of method acting! Yessir! Stanislavsky had nothing on me! Now, all I've gotta do is change my personality! I figure a clown like Mike Murdock is sure to be on all the time!" Daredevil vol. 1 #26 by Stan Lee, Gene Colan, Frank Giacoia, and Artie Simek

Matt and his dark glasses were inseparable in the 60s-- literally, to the point that he even apparently wore them under his Daredevil mask (fortunately, he doesn't do that anymore). The clear hesitance of DD artists in this period to draw their blind protagonist's uncovered eyes is likely one of the reasons that when it came time for Matt to invent himself a fake sighted twin, the sunglasses stayed on. This has not always been the case. In the years since, Matt has taken on several sighted identities in which he does not wear glasses at all-- notably, con artist Jack Batlin in the 90s. Of the two approaches, the former makes slightly more in-universe sense. As someone with no vision at all, who was blinded in a physically damaging accident, logic suggests that Matt's eyes would look different from those of a sighted person-- most likely due to chemical burns/scarring, but at the very least from things like a lack of eye contact. Thus, the choice for Matt to simply switch up his style of shades for the Mike look, rather than taking the risk of foregoing them entirely, feels logical (even if it doesn't always match up with the way Matt's eyes are actually depicted, but that's a topic for another post).

As it turned out, the oversized, colorful shades ended up tying perfectly into the loudness of the rest of "Mike's" outfits, becoming a memorable staple of the look that Matt crafted for his fake twin-- a look that was as distant from the classic Matt Murdock suit and tie (and simple, dignified shades) as he could manage. These shades were iconically, undeniably Mike's. However, they were still born from the use of sunglasses as a visual shorthand for-- and Matt's in-character response to-- his blindness. A Daredevil reader in 1968 might have looked at ol' Loudmouth Mike and asked the question: If this guy were a real person, independent of Matt, with his own backstory and reasons for dressing the way he does-- would he still choose to wear dark glasses?

Mike: "Well, as I live and breathe! You're Daredevil, right? Friend of my brother, if I don't miss my guess. Real pleasure to meet you at last." Daredevil vol. 5 #606 by Charles Soule, Phil Noto, and Clayton Cowles ("As I live and breathe" is such a funny thing for him to say in this scene.)

Enter: Fragment-Boy Mike, and the beginnings of an answer.

When it came to transforming the concept of Mike Murdock into a fully realized character of his own -- not to mention pulling him out of the 1960s and into the 2010s-- some core Mike Murdock elements were dropped by the creative team, both for the sake of streamlining the narrative and in order to match the tone of the contemporary comic. Fragment Mike is no longer Daredevil's alter ego; in fact, he claims in his first appearance in Daredevil #606 that he has never even met DD before. Gone are the loud clothes, the primary colors, the waistcoats, the fedora with the feather in it. Curiously, all that remains of his original Look(TM)...is the sunglasses.

Foggy: "That is...correct. How did you...?" Mike: "Because I ain't him. I'm me. And now, Foggy...you need to call my brother." Daredevil vol. 5 #608 by Charles Soule, Phil Noto, and Clayton Cowles

Fragment Mike existed in a kind of limbo that neither he, nor Matt, nor even his "creator" Reader really understood-- a tortuous state of both being and non-being, in which he believed himself to be real and then had his worldview shattered by learning that no one else saw him that way. Mike claimed his autonomy and fought for his right to live throughout that story arc, but the simple truth was that he was born out of Matt-- specifically, out of Matt's case files, from which Reader accidentally spawned him-- and the memories he possessed of being anyone/anything else were false. He was nothing but a twisted, reanimated echo of an identity his brother had created, dark glasses included; Matt but not Matt, physically separate but still bound to his brother.

Mike: "I'm Matt Murdock's twin brother, but...but I'm not. I've got some fake memories. I'm like a shell of a thing...but inside...I can tell I didn't live through anything...and I think...I think it's driving me crazy." Daredevil vol. 6 Annual #1 by Chip Zdarsky, Manuel Garcia, Le Beau Underwood, Chris Mooneyham, Rachelle Rosenberg, and Clayton Cowles

But! Fragment Mike, just like Matt, maybe because of Matt, is a fighter. He does not take being fake lying down. Through some Norn Stone magic, our fragment became a Real Boy, with real memories of a real backstory. And if we take a look through that backstory, we finally receive an answer to that 1968 DD fan's hypothetical question, because...

Daredevil vol. 6 Annual #1 by Chip Zdarsky, Manuel Garcia, Le Beau Underwood, Chris Mooneyham, Rachelle Rosenberg, and Clayton Cowles

The moment Mike Murdock becomes a real person, the sunglasses vanish.

Look back through Daredevil volume 6. Once he is officially, cosmically real, the only time we ever see Mike wearing dark glasses is when he is dressed up as Matt (ohhh, the poetry of it all!). He is wearing them, standing in Matt's apartment, when he dies in Matt's place-- fated, in the end, to never entirely escape his brother's gravitational pull-- but what matters is that the sunglasses tied Mike to his origins as his twin in a costume, and the loss of them indicates fully and utterly that Mike has broken away and become his own person. We even get this fascinating scene at the beginning of volume 7:

Matt: "...It was Matt. He came back from rehab, went to his apartment... I don't know what the #$@% Fisk was thinking, but I know they've got history and... Ah, Butch. He killed my brother." Daredevil vol. 7 #1 by Chip Zdarsky, Marco Checchetto, Matthew Wilson, and Clayton Cowles

This is Matt Murdock, in the year 2022, once more pretending to be Mike...post-Norn Stone reality rewrite. And this time? No sunglasses. In fact, Matt claims that the key to a foolproof Mike Murdock disguise is in the eyes: "Not just making sure they faced the right direction...but that no matter what, he had kindness in them..."

Do I love Mike Murdock wearing smarmy shades? Of course I do. But I love a good piece-of-clothing-as-allegory just as much, and I love peeling back the layers of identity to discover who Mike really is when he is not his brother.

[daresplaining]

"I'm M--"

Daredevil vol. 6 Annual #1 by Chip Zdarsky, Manuel Garcia, Le Beau Underwood, Chris Mooneyham, Rachelle Rosenberg, and Clayton Cowles

[daresplaining]

Is it ever explained what happens with Matt's middlename after Mike becomes a real boy? Is he still called Matthew Michael or did Mike take his middle name? Or, my personal favourite, are they now a pair of twins called Matthew Michael Murdock and Michael Matthew Murdock for maximum chaos?

This has not been addressed on-panel, and I'm dying for it to be because one of the funniest side-effects of Mike inserting himself into Matt's past is the fact that this guy's first name is now actually, literally his brother's middle name, implying that Maggie and Jack were just...not very creative about naming their kids. I could hypothetically see Matt maybe having a different middle name now just to avoid that goofy implication, but I would be disappointed, and it would be up to a DD writer to actively make that choice.

And yes, I'm a huge fan of Mike's middle name being Matthew to bring the joke full-circle (though I asked Chip Zdarsky about this a few years ago and I like his version too).

[daresplaining]

ok, so . . . Mike actually exists?!

He does! And he's the worst best!

Mike: "Matt Murdock's a bastard! Can I get an amen, people? Now, if you'll excuse me...I believe I was attempting to sleep with your wife." Daredevil vol. 5 #606 by Charles Soule, Phil Noto, and Clayton Cowles

[daresplaining]

I’m sorry I’m confused, is Mike Murdock is an actual person in the marvel universe or not?

Mike used to be one of Matt's alter egos-- a fake twin brother, who Matt claimed was Daredevil in order to protect the truth-- but yes, he is now an actual, real person!

Matt: "Daredevil told me how all this happened. You've got to know you were just a story, right? Something I did when I was young and dumb. I never had a brother. It was just me and Dad." Mike: "All I know, Matt, is you got one now. I'm trying to see any reason it matters how I got here, or what I remember and what I don't. Far as I can tell, I'm alive. The rest...I'll worry about later." Daredevil vol. 5 #608 by Charles Soule, Phil Noto, and Clayton Cowles

To get the full story of how this bizarre and wondrous thing occurred, you're going to want to read Daredevil volume 5 #606-608 and Daredevil volume 6 Annual #1. It's one of my favorite DD stories ever, so I highly, highly recommend checking it out.

If you'd rather just have a synopsis, you can find the most up-to-date version at the bottom of this post right here. I've also covered Real Boy Mike's journey very, very extensively in my Mike Murdock tag (though warning-- there are spoilers).

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Mike: "Hey! I ain't gonna seduce my brother's ex again! At least not while pretending to be him like some creep!" Matt: "'Again'?" Daredevil vol. 6 #24 by Chip Zdarsky, Mike Hawthorne, J.P. Mayer, Mattia Iacono, and Clayton Cowles

I posted this legendary panel when the issue came out because, I mean, of course I did. But I'm posting it again because it hasn't received any follow-up yet and I think about it on a semi-daily basis, and because I'm curious about something.

Daredevil fans! Which of Matt's exes do you want Mike to have seduced? (It can be more than one-- this phrasing is very nonspecific.) Feel free to explain your answer.

[daresplaining]

Thanks a lot for the explanation! The more k read about Mike the more I love him!

Another question! What's the norn stone and what's Mike's deal with it? I know he used it but why? How? What did he do with it? Wasn't he real already?

Aaah, I'm really glad! Thank you for giving me the excuse to talk about one of my favorite guys.

The Norn Stones are powerful magical items of Asgardian origin, which can be used by their wielder to, among other things, alter reality. I'm going to point you to the Marvel wiki for more detailed information.

The sequence of events by which Mike ended up with a Norn Stone and made himself really real is covered in Daredevil volume 5 #606-608 (his introductory arc) and the 2020 Annual, which you should check out because they're really good and essential Mike reading. But here's the gist:

Mike technically became real when Reader magicked him into existence...but only for a given value of "real". He materialized as a fully functioning, autonomous, sentient individual with a personality and memories and so on, and he was not initially aware that he hadn't always existed. But according to the rest of the world-- including, most importantly, his brother-- he was this strange quasi-person who had suddenly popped into existence out of nowhere. (Reader referred to him dehumanizingly as a "fragment"). This means that there was a disconnect between Mike's perception of himself as a real person and the world's perception of him as a fiction made real. It also means that all of his memories, his relationships with his loved ones, and a lifetime's worth of experiences only existed in his mind. Even worse, he began to notice gaps in these memories as a symptom of their not being real. As you might imagine, this was a pretty horrifying experience for Mike.

Mike: "Then some guy...one of those power guys you run with...messed up and made me. Can you believe it? Out of thin air. I'm Matt Murdock's twin brother, but...but I'm not. I've got some fake memories. I'm like a shell of a thing...but inside...I can tell I didn't live through anything...and I think...I think it's driving me crazy." Daredevil vol. 6 Annual #1 by Chip Zdarsky, Manuel Garcia, Le Beau Underwood, Chris Mooneyham, Rachelle Rosenberg, and Clayton Cowles

"I'm Matt Murdock's twin brother, but I'm not" is a perfect summary of the situation. Mike needed some way to reconcile the dissonance between his own perception of his realness/memories of his life and the fact that it was all false. He needed to fix his one-sided relationship with Matt, who Mike thought he'd shared a life with but to whom he was basically a stranger.

At the end of Mike's introductory arc in #608, he ended up going to the Kingpin for protection, who passed him along to the Hood. And the Hood, at that point, had a Norn Stone (as told in The Defenders (2017))! There's a time skip between #608's ending and Mike's next appearance in the Annual, so we don't get the details about how he learned about the stone, but in that time he hatched a plan to use it. He stole the stone from the Hood (pretty risky-- you don't mess with the Hood), hired Black Cat to steal him a copy of an Asgardian text providing instructions on how to use it, and turned himself really, truly real by using the stone's cosmic power to insert his backstory into the existing past and make himself Matt's actual twin brother from birth. To be very clear: he changed reality. It's Mike Murdock's world now, the rest of the Marvel Universe is just living in it.